The PP has ignored for more than a year the repeated questions from a few media about the bonuses that its president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and his leadership team receive from the party. If the existence of these supplements to public salaries at the national headquarters on Calle de Génova in Madrid was not recognized, it would not be necessary to report the exact salary that Feijóo receives apart from the one that enters the Senate (71,000 euros) and that, according to the transparency law, should be public. The opposition leader did not even declare it before the Upper House. But he himself had to break the wall of silence in the middle of the 23J campaign when he recognized that, indeed, he charges it. It remains to know how much. A fire that the PP has tried to put out with a partial leak that leaves many questions unanswered.
The PP acknowledges before the European Parliament that it pays bonuses to the leadership of Feijóo
Further
The team closest to Feijóo met this Wednesday at the national headquarters on Calle de Génova in Madrid. That day, the candidate’s agenda was empty except for the interview scheduled for that night at El Hormiguero. But on the table there was another matter to discuss: the information management of the president’s bonuses and the rest of his Management Committee. Because not only Feijóo charges it. For the moment, the first one who has recognized him before the European Parliament was one of his deputy secretaries, Esteban González Pons, who chose not to hide in Brussels. Pons opted for the path of transparency in the Eurochamber. His leader chose the opposite in the Senate.
Feijóo’s confession in the Ser’s microphones caused the PSOE to mobilize in the Senate. The socialist group asked the president of the Chamber, Ander Gil, to demand that Feijóo publish his salary data, and he sent him a formal request to do so before July 4. From Genoa they assured elDiario.es that “in case of receiving a salary, they will notify” Ander Gil.
But he hasn’t. He doesn’t even have the intention of doing it, according to leaks from Feijóo’s team in recent days. His roadmap involves not officially declaring the income he receives from the PP, outside the Senate, until after the July 23 elections.
Feijóo earns more than Pedro Sánchez
The political pressure rose a few degrees after Feijóo recognized what they had tried to hide for months and pushed the PP to move and filter an amount to three media outlets: 39,260 euros. It was not clarified to which period it corresponds, but it cannot be a whole year since Feijóo became president of the PP at the end of March 2022 and left the Xunta on April 29. Regardless of the months to which these payments correspond, the figure added to the 70,121 gross euros that he receives from the Senate amounts to 109,381 euros, slightly more than what the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, enters. The salary of the chief executive is 90,010.20 euros. In addition, Sánchez enters the 958.75 euros per month (14 payments) with which Congress covers the expenses of the deputies and which, by ruling of the Supreme Court during the term of Mariano Rajoy, is compatible with the Government’s salary. In total, 103,432.7 euros.
After months of silence, Feijóo responded for the first time in this regard this Thursday. The leader of the PP offered a press conference in Brussels after a meeting of his party at the European level. “There is no other remuneration or representation expenses,” he said, before attacking Sánchez for collecting the compensation that Congress pays to the deputies. Then Feijóo skirted the truth by saying that “in the presidency of the parties there is an additional salary to the salary of a deputy or senator.” It may be true in the PP, but that does not imply that it happens in the rest of the formations: neither the PSOE nor Podemos, among the big parties, pay their leaders if they already have paid public positions.
The PP has tried to settle the controversy over Feijóo’s salary with the aforementioned leak and trying to extend the cloak of silence until the electoral campaign is over.
But there are many doubts in the air about the PP’s payments to Feijóo that elDiario.es has tried to clear up, without success. In recent days, this medium has addressed different national party leaders. elDiario.es has also transferred a series of written questions that the PP has not answered either.
The questions were aimed at specifying, for example, if the 39,260 euros that the PP leaked that its president received from the party in 2022 is a gross amount (before taxes) or net, since when did it begin to receive that allocation, what is it the amount of a full annuity and whether you enter it month by month or through a single annual payment.
elDiario.es has also asked if this figure, presented as “representation expenses” by some media, includes meals, transportation and housing payments. The PP has responded with silence and the full salary of its leader remains a mystery.
